How AdWords and DoubleClick Bid Manager work with Ad Exchange

We often get questions about how Google's display ad buying solutions, AdWords (GDN) and DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM), work with the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. In this article we explain the three main benefits to publishers and advertisers when AdWords and DBM are used to buy ads on DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Higher cookie match

AdWords and DBM perform best when buying inventory on Ad Exchange, because these buying platforms share the same infrastructure with Ad Exchange. That means the cookie matching loss that might occur when AdWords and DBM buy on other exchanges is minimized when buying on Ad Exchange. So, when AdWords and DBM buy on Ad Exchange, there is a higher likelihood they’ll find impressions that meet their targeting criteria, creating greater auction pressure and demand for the publisher’s inventory.

Lower latency

All exchanges and inventory pools have a time limit for buyers to submit bids to their auctions. Since AdWords and DBM run on servers in the same data centers as Ad Exchange, they can respond faster to Ad Exchange bid requests compared to other exchange requests. There are no network latency or timeout issues between either AdWords or DBM and Ad Exchange, which means publishers on Ad Exchange always receive bids from AdWords and DBM advertisers.

When AdWords and DBM buy on other exchanges, they face the same network latency that all buyers do. We’ve found that in some cases, latency issues can prevent buyers from successfully submitting a bid on up to 25% of bid requests, preventing them from fully participating in the auctions of other exchanges.

Confidence in inventory

When AdWords and DBM are buying inventory on Ad Exchange, they can buy with full confidence in the quality of publisher inventory. Because of Google’s direct relationship with publishers, when we see issues with inventory -- whether associated with sensitive content, third-party spam attacks, or other things buyers are sensitive to -- we can alert the Ad Exchange publisher and work together to resolve them quickly.

On the other hand, when AdWords and DBM buy on other exchanges, it’s often the case that we don’t have a direct relationship with publishers, so the only recourse we have to protect our advertisers when we see a potential issue is to bid and buy conservatively, or in the worst case, forgo buying from the publisher entirely.